Valérie Boisvert

Market-Based Instruments for Ecosystem Services: Institutional Innovation or Renovation?

Recent years have seen widespread experimentation with market-based instruments (MBIs) for the provision of environmental goods and ecosystem services. However, little attention has been paid to their design or to the effects of the underlying pro-market narrative on environmental policy instruments. The purpose of this article is to analyze the emergence and dissemination of the term “market-based instruments” applied to the provision of environmental services and to assess to what extent the instruments associated are genuinely innovative. The recommendation to develop markets can lead in practice to a variety of institutional forms, as we show it based on the example of payments for environmental services (PES) and biodiversity offsets, two very different mechanisms that are both presented in the literature as MBIs. Our purpose is to highlight the gap between discourse and practice in connection with MBIs.

The Convention on Biological Diversity: An Institutionalist Perspective of the Debates

Biodiversity came out as a global issue from the mid 1980s, under the pressure of converging forces: the threatening increase in species extinction and the changes in the theory as well as in the practice of nature conservation, but also the expansion of genetic engineering and the intrusion of industrial interests into areas from which they had been hitherto excluded. These elements have participated in the development of utilitarian perceptions of nature, reduced to a set of resources thanks to new technologies that have made its extensive economic exploitation possible. The Convention on Biological Diversity, adopted in 1992 during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, is in line with this approach (UNEP 1992). Indeed, the Convention rests on the notion of sustainable use of biological resources (first article), that is, an exploitation that meets the criteria of efficiency and equity and is meant to finance conservation but also to foster development in countries of the South and to benefit pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. The Convention presents the definition of adequate property rights to biological resources and related knowledge as an essential prerequisite for the institution of the sustainable use—hence of the conservation—of biodiversity. This analysis comes to adhere implicitly to the conventional view of biodiversity erosion as a consequence of the appropriation failure that prevailed prior to the adoption of the Convention. Transnational corporations then had free access to indigenous resources—including knowledge—and after screening they could patent parts of these resources or their applications, depriving their former holders of their traditional use rights, as attested by the examples of neem in India or yellow bean in Mexico, both patented by American

La construction sociale de la question de la biodiversité

Abstract The erosion of biodiversity is found alongside with the global environmental problems. As such, the stages of Its definition and of the elaboration of the measures to address It are organized along the same lines as for climate change. It was first brought to the fore by scientists who saw in the Increasing rhythm of species extinction an alarming evolution. The widespread adoption of the term biological diversity to account for the objectives of life sciences testified the development of a more complex, evolutionary and Integrated approach within these sciences. Then, scientific questions came Into the public domain. Their objectives was seized by various groups with diverse perceptions and interests, referring to several legitimacy orders, conveying conflicting views of rationality and efficiency (NGOs, representatives of the industrial world, United Nations agencies, ...). The Issue ceased to be a purely scientific concern, it entered the arena of social choices. This shift In the very definition of the question and of Its stakes was accompanied by a change In the words: biological diversity was turned Into biodiversity. Then a compromise among the participants - the convention on biological diversity - was sought and organized, In particular under the pressure of the Industries using biotechnologies. It confirmed the trends that had been outlined in the preceding years: the tendency to reduce bodiversity to its genetic components considered as resources, that Is potential inputs for Industry, and the claim for property rights, presented as the means to ensure access to genetic materials and to favour International trade agreements and technology transfer. Market logic and rationality have finally prevailed over concerns for ethics and heritage. Biodiversity has been reduced to a set of resources, the valuation and adequate appropriation of which appear as prerequisites for the institution of a market held to be a guarantee of sustainable management.

Les droits de propriété intellectuelle au service de la biodiversité. Une mice en œuvre bien conflictuelle

Abstract Intellectual property rights in favour of biodiversity, a most debated implementation. The discussions about biodiverslty are crystallized around the question of commoditization of knowledge and life forms by means of intellectual property rights. Though there were other protection systems, adapted to the particular characteristics of plant genetic resources, the Convention on Biological Diversity has confirmed the extension of patents to life forms. NGOs, organizing the opposition to the commoditizatlon of life forms emphasize the unsuitability of intellectual property rights for community knowledge on plant cultivars and medicinal herbs in the South. Acting as advocates and allies of local populations of farmers and indigenous peoples, they advocate the passing of farmers’rights and peoples’rights that would be grounded in tradition and community property.

Un prix pour la biodiversité. L’évaluation économique entre différentes légitimites

Abstract A price for biodiversity, economic valuation at the core of several legitimacy orders. Economic valuation takes up a central place in the economics of biodiversity as well as in the discourses of the different actors taking part in the negotiations and in the process of social construction of biodiversity. Valuation appears first as a theoretical necessity for economists who consider the determination of a price as the essential prerequisite for an optimal management of natural resources. It has acquired an institutional legitimacy through its widespread use in the context of cost-benefit analysis. NGOs also resort to economic valuation for strategic purposes, to back their opposition to planned policies, to stress the despoliation of the South and to promote alternative proposals with second assessments. Because of this takeover of valuation by all the actors, it is not to be considered as a merely economic tool. Though the valuations done for some aspects of blodiversity such as non-timber forest products, medicinal plants or ecotourism are to some extent based on economic methods, their purpose is not that suggested by economic theory. They are not revealing concealed values that would exist prior to valuation. They are instrumental in building these values. This bias is not only due to the strategic use of their results by the actors but to the very valuation methods and procedures. Some economists hold the valuation methods to be preferable to other consultation procedures because of their pretended characteristics of neutrality, democracy and optimality. The calling into question of the latter should lead to relativize the significance of economic valuation.

La construction sociale de la question de la biodiversité: Social construction of the problem of biodiversity

Abstract The erosion of biodiversity is found alongside with the global environmental problems. As such, the stages of Its definition and of the elaboration of the measures to address It are organized along the same lines as for climate change. It was first brought to the fore by scientists who saw in the Increasing rhythm of species extinction an alarming evolution. The widespread adoption of the term biological diversity to account for the objectives of life sciences testified the development of a more complex, evolutionary and Integrated approach within these sciences. Then, scientific questions came Into the public domain. Their objectives was seized by various groups with diverse perceptions and interests, referring to several legitimacy orders, conveying conflicting views of rationality and efficiency (NGOs, representatives of the industrial world, United Nations agencies, ...). The Issue ceased to be a purely scientific concern, it entered the arena of social choices. This shift In the very definition of the question and of Its stakes was accompanied by a change In the words: biological diversity was turned Into biodiversity. Then a compromise among the participants - the convention on biological diversity - was sought and organized, In particular under the pressure of the Industries using biotechnologies. It confirmed the trends that had been outlined in the preceding years: the tendency to reduce bodiversity to its genetic components considered as resources, that Is potential inputs for Industry, and the claim for property rights, presented as the means to ensure access to genetic materials and to favour International trade agreements and technology transfer. Market logic and rationality have finally prevailed over concerns for ethics and heritage. Biodiversity has been reduced to a set of resources, the valuation and adequate appropriation of which appear as prerequisites for the institution of a market held to be a guarantee of sustainable management.

Business for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Since the end of the 1980s, conservation policies have focused on the search for market solutions to environmental problems. Several attempts have been made over years to turn various parts or facets of nature into economic assets, from genetic resources through ecosystem services. Similarly, several types of institutional arrangements have been in turn presented as markets. The relative failure of these tentative market policies has just led to shifts from one aspect or component of biodiversity to others and to the adoption of new ‘business models’ as previous arrangements proved ineffective. The latest product of this speculation surrounding nature is attached to ecosystem services that have become an inclusive framework encompassing most environmental issues (climate change, desertification, soil erosion, water, biodiversity, etc.). The concept of ecosystem services has begun spreading after the release of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment by the mid 2000s. This notion was formed at the interface of science and policy and is grounded neither in ecological nor in economic theories. Setting back ecosystem services in the history of environmental and ecological economics enables to restore the cognitive background from which this notion emerged and to explain both its hegemony and its impacts. Indeed, in line with green economy, it conveys a vision of nature as exempt from any conflict and danger and is quite positive about the feasibility of a harmonious combination of human activities and environmental protection, sustained by market development. It does not provide an adequate framework to deal with vulnerability and risk.